Commandments of the William Shatner school for the Correction of Bad Writing

The chat ladies strike again! While discussing the many abuses of the English language to be found in fanfic, we decided to make a list of the worst offenders. So many of them sounded like they came from an old Star Trek episode that we decided to dedicate our list to William Shatner. So, we present to you the Commandments of the William Shatner school for the Correction of Bad Writing.

(Note: this list is intended to be amusing, a reminder of the dumb things we all do, or of our own pet peeves. It is not directed at anyone on or off list specifically. Nor is it meant to be insulting or demeaning. All in good fun folks!)

• Thou shalt not overuse the ellipsis.
• Thou shalt not abuse the "show, not tell" rule.
• Thou shalt not add adverbs after every verb.
• Thou shalt punctuate wisely, without excess.
• Thou shalt not use expletives except in dire circumstances.
• Thou shalt not call Ares "Snookums" or any other schmoopy term.
• Thou shalt restrict the use of epithets to rosy fingered Dawn.
• Thou shalt not disable thy spell-checker.
• Thou shalt not begin thy paragraphs in the same way over and over.
• Thou shalt check for all your "to", "too", and "two".
• Thou shalt not use fancy-assed speech verbs instead of said.
• Thou shalt be more creative in the sack than one finger, two fingers, three fingers, fuck.
• Thou shalt learn to know the difference between their and there.
• Thou shalt use no condoms.
• Thou shalt not refer to the asshole as a "rosebud."
• Thou shalt not use flowery synonyms to describe the prostate.
• Thou shalt not call the cock a "manhood," "rod," or "stick of luuvvvv".
• Thou shalt not mention the color of thy men's eyes. (And if thee are compelled, they shalt not be amber, cobalt, etc.)
• Thou shalt not hurt thy men only to comfort them.
• Thou shalt not make Ares or Caesar into wussy bottoms.
• Thou shalt not refer to 'the smaller' man.
• Thou shalt not call Iolaus "The Golden Hunter" under penalty of death.
• Thou shalt not say Iolaus has "golden curls".
• Thou shalt not use the word 'golden' in any fic that Iolaus appears in.
• Thou shalt not have thy men leaking all over the place from their penile areas. Thy penises shalt not weep.
• Thou shalt only refer to their penile areas as cocks.
• Thou shalt consider thy words' connotations.
• Thou shalt learn to use the apostrophe.
• Thou shalt not Gabby bash in a Joxer fic.
• Thou shalt not post hundreds of little bits and call them chapters.
• Thou shalt have thy characters talk like real people.
• Thou shalt use exposition wisely and frugally.
• Thou shalt avoid obvious anachronisms.
• Thou shalt avoid Mary-Sues.
• Thou shalt not project thyself into the story as Ares' daughter.
• Thou shalt *never* have babies in thy fic to prevent thy readers' vomiting.
• Thou shalt not refer to anyone, on matter how young, small or blond as 'precious'.
• Thou shalt not refer to anyone as "small" or "blond" either.
• Thou shall not insert a sex scene when you run out of plot.
• Thou shalt not insert plot when you runnest out of sex.
• Thou shalt not abuse Herc for no apparent reason.
• Thou shall not give us 3 pages of introduction to make up for bad writing.
• Thou shalt learn to punctuate dialogue.
• Thou shalt watch thy antecedents.

Posted 10 Jun 2001 by Lorna.